--- title: The Content Gap that Stalls Today's Sale description: Discover why traditional content marketing fails today and learn how to adapt your strategy to effectively support customer decision-making. --- [Skip to content](https://www.growth-arc.com/articles/the-content-gap-that-stalls-todays-sale#main-content) [![GA\_Web+Logo-01](https://www.growth-arc.com/hubfs/GA_Web+Logo-01.png)](https://www.growth-arc.com) - [Home](https://www.growth-arc.com) - Consulting - [Sales & Marketing](https://www.growth-arc.com/commercial-excellence) - [Innovation](https://www.growth-arc.com/innovation) - [Strategy](https://www.growth-arc.com/strategy) - [Case Studies](https://www.growth-arc.com/cases) - Executive Coaching - 1 on 1 Coaching - [Group Mastermind](https://www.growth-arc.com/breakthrough) - [Exec Roundtable](https://www.growth-arc.com/roundtable) - [Articles](https://www.growth-arc.com/articles/tag/executive-development) - About - [Results](https://www.growth-arc.com/clients-results) - [Case Studies](https://www.growth-arc.com/cases) - [Our Firm](https://www.growth-arc.com/about) - [Contact](https://www.growth-arc.com/contact-us) - Newsletter - [Subscribe](https://www.growth-arc.com/subscribe) - [Business Growth](https://www.growth-arc.com/articles/tag/business-growth) - [Exec Career](https://www.growth-arc.com/articles/tag/executive-development) - [Roundtable](https://www.growth-arc.com/roundtable) Search Growth Arc - There are no suggestions because the search field is empty. # The Content Gap that Stalls Today's Sale [Kendall Justiniano](https://www.growth-arc.com/articles/author/kendall-justiniano) 02 October Discover why traditional content marketing fails today and learn how to adapt your strategy to effectively support customer decision-making. ### - Content We Built for Yesterday's Buyer I've audited a lot of content stacks at materials companies, and the audit that counts what's there almost never explains why deals stall. The stacks themselves look remarkably alike. Awareness and capability pieces on top: who we are, where the plants are, what we make. Underneath, the long tail of sales enablement: selection guides, technical bulletins, application data sheets, processing notes. And sometimes a thought-leadership program, added in the last few years. Most of it is good work, better made than it would have been a decade ago. Count it all and you get a clean, complete picture that still says nothing about why deals stall. The effort is fine. The question is the problem: an inventory tells you what's there. The problem is usually what isn't. The stack we've built was the right one for the sale it was built for. For most of this industry's history, a buyer who wanted to learn anything had to call. Awareness got the call. Then the rep arrived and did the rest: framed the problem, handled the objections, walked the case around the building. Content's job was to make the phone ring and give the rep something to leave behind. It did that job well. Taking stock of your content is a good start, and I've [recommended it before](https://www.growth-arc.com/articles/the-marketing-conversion-gap). The fuller version adds a second list: what's missing. ## Where Today's Buyer Stalls The sale changed underneath the stack. Today's buying group does most of its work alone, before it talks to us and in the long stretches between conversations. Gartner puts the time buyers spend with all potential suppliers combined at about 17% of the buying process. The rep still arrives. They just arrive late, to a decision that's already been mostly shaped. When a group works alone, it stalls, and it stalls in the same places, deal after deal. **Framing the problem.** Before anyone evaluates a supplier, the group is working out what problem it has and what its options are. Do nothing. Reformulate. Requalify the incumbent. Design around it. Almost nothing on an industrial content shelf touches any of those, because we don't like naming alternatives. So the frame sets without us, and we learn what it was when the RFQ arrives. **The internal case.** Somewhere inside the customer, one person has become our champion. Now they have to carry the case to colleagues who were in none of the meetings: procurement, operations, quality, finance. We hand them a datasheet and wish them luck. Nothing we built is designed for a room we'll never enter. **The long middle.** A decision here takes months. Awareness lands in a moment. In between, the group is working, and nothing we've built is working with them. Set the stack beside those three and the pattern is plain. Every layer tells the buyer about us. None of it is built to move a buyer through *their* decision. That's why more of any layer changes so little. Double the application notes and the group still stalls in exactly the same places. This is the part I find encouraging. The missing content is harder to make than what's already on the shelf. You can write a capability piece from inside your own building. You can't write the options piece, or arm a champion, without knowing how your customer actually decides: who's in the room, what worries them, where it goes quiet. That knowledge is what makes a marketing function strategic, and it's a harder job than the one it replaces. ## Actioning the Insight 1. **Take the first inventory.** List what you have and how it splits across awareness, enablement and thought leadership. The proportions tell you what the function was built to do. 2. **Take the second.** Hold the stack against the three stall points (the buyer's options, the champion's case, the long middle) and write down what isn't there. For most companies, the first two can be built now. 3. **Learn the buying process before you fill the middle.** The long middle doesn't need more volume. It needs you to know where influence is actually possible: the specific moments when a group is looking for something and could be helped to its next step. Find those by learning how your customers buy, then build for the one that costs you the most. The shelf was stocked for a buyer who called early. Today's buyer calls late, and much of what decides the sale happens in the gap between. Until next week, Kendall - [![secta.ai\_005 keyhole](https://www.growth-arc.com/hs-fs/hubfs/secta.ai_005%20keyhole.png?width=120&height=120&name=secta.ai_005%20keyhole.png)](https://www.growth-arc.com/bios) [Find me on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendalljustiniano/) or [Book a 1:1 call](https://www.growth-arc.com/meetings/kendall-justiniano) Not a subscriber yet? [Subscribe here](https://www.growth-arc.com/subscribe) [![Need to drive growth? Growth Arc Advisors is a consultancy focused on Materials industries (chemicals, plastics, oil & gas, biomaterials). 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